midi keyboard suggestion
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Howdy:
I'm getting ready to pull the trigger on both a Slim Phatty and Minitaur both. I'm a former LP stage 2 owner so I'm familiar with the control layout on that.
The slim phatty will be a part of my Foogertron rack, and the minitaur I plan to mainly pair up with my Fatar midi bass pedals (but who knows?).
Before you start, keep in mind that I'm not a keyboard player. I'm a bass player. So I don't need a full size keyboard, I'm going to be creating synth patches with the Slim for ambient soundscapes, and dropping bombs with the minitaur, and if I can ever figure it out, might have some sequencing happening from outboard sequencer or iPad or something.
So 25 key would be OK, should have modwheels. But what else am I looking for?
For example, a few years ago when I was looking to do this I was looking at the m-audio axiom and axiom pro 25 key.... Will this work with what I'm trying to do? What are the knobs and ""pads"" for?
I'm 100% new to MIDI, I know what it does in theory but I've never done any of it myself.
What other 25 key controllers can you recommend?
Also, my midi bass pedals are pretty low tech - is there some other kind of MIDI interface I can use with them, with the Minitaur that would allow me a display to see what patch is playing, etc?
Thanks
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Are these models good? A friend of mine recommended Akai and another one said he'd go for Arturia
now I'm confused -
@haleyb You might have more luck getting replies on a musicians forum like vi-control or kvr.
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Anecdotally, the Arturia controllers feel better to me in terms of build quality. Granted I haven't owned an M-Audio controller in well over a decade, so take that with a grain of salt.
In terms of what the knobs and pads are for, you'd be able to assign those to parameters of the Slim Phatty using the appropriate midi CC#s (here's a forum post where a user mapped them out). So you'd be able to assign one of the knobs to the filter cutoff for example, and one of the pads to switch the octave of oscillator #1, etc. Possibly useful if the Phatty is racked and you don't want to walk over to it while making a patch, or if you want to manipulate parameters while playing live.
As far as I can tell, you're not really shopping for a feature set beyond what any standard MIDI controller would offer, so you're likely safe buying any well-built controller until your needs change. You might be able to get away with something even more basic without extra knobs/pads like an Arturia Keystep. I'd suggest heading over to your local instrument shop and demoing a few controllers and see if something like the width of the keys, build quality, etc. matter to you. Good luck!
